Dear AltSearchEngines:
Two weeks ago I started my new project SocialOyster
Perhaps you are interested in this…
You will find 3 services at SocialOyster:
1. The Oysterpass – here you can create an overview of your social activities.
2. A social search engine – search your friends on different platforms or users in your neighborhood.
3. The Oysterline – follow your friends live.
About SocialOyster:
The first idea I had, when I saw all that pages with a lot of links to Twitter, Flickr, LinkedIn and so on. I thought that one button would be enough. So I created the Oysterpass. The Oysterpass shows all major properties of a user at his applications – and the last items he posted to this platforms.
But there are users without their own website. Bob at Twitter is not Bob at Flickr. So I created the social search engin. Here you can search for friends by usernames. Select “places” to find users in you neighborhood.
And last but not least: The Oysterline.
The Idea was a realtime-ajax-timeline; that means: If you open your Oysterline, SocialOyster checks the content of your friends at all this platforms. So I do not store any data – the data is coming directly from the platforms.
SocialOyster checks this platforms – if you are online – every 30/60/120/360 seconds. You can select this checkingintervals. Or you click at check now. If you start your Oysterline and upload a picture at Flickr, you see it after the next checking at you Oysterline without refreshing the page.
If you add a RSS-Feed to your Oysterline it will also be checked for new items. If there is a new one – it will be displayed at your Oysterline.
Use “import your friends” to add all your friends to your Oysterline.
You can send messages to the Oysterline or – private – to your friends.
This messages can include a text, a link and a picture.
You can post it to the Oysterline or to a map at the Oysteline.
About my plans:
I will add some more platforms. Currently it supports Twitter, Flickr, delicious, Jaiku, Google Reader, YouTube, MySpace, Digg, LastFM, Xing, Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Photobucket, Technorati, Furl, and Facebook.
And one more idea:
At the moment you can add a user only to the Oysterline. I am planing, that people who visit your Oysterpass can add your platformfeeds to others like Netvibes or IGoogle.
SocialOyster is a one man show. It’s my hobby and I have no special plans for the future. I hope you like this site.
Best regards from Cologne,
Marcus Reimold
Caronte Web
Federated Search
Highlight Health
MSearchGroove
Ramenos Blog
Reel SEO
Software Abstractions
The Genius Files
The Next Web
August 20th, 2008 at 8:33 am
This is a very handsome, potentially very useful tool. I like Social Oyster. The major difficulty I see is that users may not know a person’s user name. I may know his proper name, but what if he goes by, “Bubble Gum Man” so some such moniker? Could you add an index of proper names? (Or would that be too massive to be practicable?)
Also, could users somehow set up RSS feeds of set parameters for certain people? For instance, could I follow via an RSS feed the new entries of a specific person’s additions to her del.icio.us bookmarks and to any new photos she posts on Flickr?
Could you set up categories of famous people in certain fields—like noted scholars such as economists, politicians, journalists, venture capitalists, etc.? I could see that being very useful for journalists. Could you add Connotea? Academics use the Web, too.
Also who is your competition in this area? How is your tool better? It is certainly slick and handsome. Whom do you best and in what way?
It would be interesting to see what Chris Pirillo would think of Social Oyster given that he blogged about Ping a few weeks ago:
http://chris.pirillo.com/2008/06/24/how-do-you-update-your-friends-with-whats-happening-now/
and related stuff:
http://chris.pirillo.com/2008/08/08/where-do-you-keep-your-social-profile/
He talks about the generators of the stuff. Some of don’t us generate any stuff—we just read about other people—that is where you come in.
Keep up the good work!
August 20th, 2008 at 9:33 am
Dear Hope,
I try to answer your questions with my bad english.
About the proper names:
I did not find any API, where you can search users by their proper names. But just today I was thinking about this idea. And I think I found a way. Give me some more days.
Also, could users somehow set up RSS feeds of set parameters for certain people?
Yes, it is already possible. For instance, if you search for a twitter-user und you are interested in this user, click at the “add to Oysterline” button. Now you can add the users twitter-feed to your Oysterline.
If this user is already a SocialOyster-user, you can select all that plarforms the users entered at his Oysterpass and add this feeds to your Oyserline.
Also who is your competition in this area? How is your tool better?
There are a lot of competitions. But I think the most difference is, that, if you are following your friends, SocialOyster gets the items live from the feeds. It is not a crawler and I don’t cache the data. For example: If you are following a flickr-user and this user uploads a picture at flickr, it will be displayed at your Oysterline after your next checking-interval. And you select the interval. It is ajax – so the new picture will be displayed without refreshing the page.
I am very happy, that you like SocialOyster. I will do my best, that you can search for proper names very soon.
Best
Marcus